Robin Williamson

Edinburgh and the String Band

Robin Duncan Harry Williamson was born on November 24, 1943 in Edinburgh, grew up in Fairmilehead, attended George Watson's College and left school at fifteen to be a professional musician, playing in local jazz bands with Gerard Dott. He was part of the early-1960s Edinburgh folk scene with Bert Jansch and Clive Palmer, centered on the Howff club, and went to London with Jansch in 1963. In 1965 he formed a duo with Palmer playing traditional Scottish and Irish material and then jug-band music, with Mike Heron added at first on rhythm guitar; Joe Boyd saw them in Glasgow and signed them to Elektra in 1966. They were resident at Clive's Incredible Folk Club in Glasgow, hence the name.

The Incredible String Band was recorded on May 22, 1966 at Sound Techniques in Chelsea in one afternoon, produced by Boyd, 45:07, and released in the UK on June 30, 1966. Boyd wanted self-written songs, each member singing his own, which marginalized Palmer. It did not chart at release and reached 34 in the UK in 1968, after The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter. Williamson and Heron became a duo in 1967 after he returned from Morocco with unfamiliar instruments, and made The 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion (July 1967, UK 25), The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter and Wee Tam and the Big Huge (1968 and 1969). Their 1969 Woodstock set was poorly received and left out of the film.

After the band

The band split in 1974 while he was on a US tour, and he moved to Los Angeles. His first solo album was Myrrh (1972, though some sources say 1971), and Robin Williamson and His Merry Band, with Sylvia Woods on Celtic harp, Jerry McMillan on fiddle and Chris Caswell on flutes, toured from about 1976 and made Journey's Edge (1977), American Stonehenge (1978) and A Glint at the Kindling (1979). From 1980 he began storytelling to improvised Celtic harp. He made Wheel of Fortune live with John Renbourn (1995, Grammy-nominated per Wikipedia), and four albums for ECM between 2000 and 2014. The Incredible String Band reformed in the late 1990s with Palmer and Heron and ended in 2006. He lives in Wales, and the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids named him honorary chief bard. Robert Plant cited the band as an influence on Led Zeppelin. He told Tim Hoke in 2008 that it might be a good idea to use different instruments in different ways in one piece of music, and on the bard, somebody who has some sort of an inspired voice. His own label is Pig's Whisker Music.